THE BEECHMONT CREST CAREER GUIDE:
SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN THE CORPORATE JUNGLE
CHAPTER 4: INTERVIEWING AND CLOSING THE DEAL
How to handle the "trick question"
“Always be smarter than the people who hire you.”
Lena Horne
As a job seeker, you want to cast yourself in the most positive light possible. You don’t want to draw attention to your warts and blemishes to show in an interview situation. (Why in the world should you?) However, the employer wants to know what you really look like—at five o’clock in the morning, before you’ve had a chance to shower or comb your hair.
Interviewers have a common stratagy for getting behind the candidate’s touch-up, glamorized image to take a peek at that first-thing-in-the-morning face. I call it “the trick question.” Before the end of the interview, you will almost certainly hear the “trick question”—or some variant of it:
“If you had to identify one personal shortcoming—or area of yourself that you would like to improve—what would it be?”
On the surface, the trick question seems to present an unsolvable dilemma. On one hand, you could respond that there is no area of yourself that you would like to improve; but this would be tantamount to claiming perfection. On the other hand, you could conduct a brief inventory of your soul and reveal whatever foibles you find there; but this would violate on of the rules we discussed earlier—the right to avoid self-sabotage.
Your best tactic is to reframe the question. Give the employer a “fault” so that you can answer the question, but make sure that the fault you mention is not really a negative trait. Here are a few examples:
“When there is a task to be done, I just can’t rest until I get it done. I’m a little bit obsessive that way.”
“I tend to set very high targets for myself, and develop a single-minded purpose until I achieve my goal.”
Make sure that you deliver your lines with a straight face and a sincere tone of voice. (I recommend practicing aloud before the interview so that your delivery will be smooth.) If they ask you to name another fault, then tell them that you really can’t think of anything else at the moment.
Copyright 2006 Beechmont Crest Publishing